Enterprising businessmen quickly discovered that many items in the Italian diet could readily be produced within the United States, and often within the city of Chicago. While imported goods enjoyed higher status, domestically produced items were more affordable and assured of a share of the market by their producers Italian names. Many import and wholesale companies were also involved in the processing of Italian style foods. Louis Caravetta of Cosenza began both to import and manufacture Italian food specialty items, particularly cheese, almost immediately upon his arrival in 1904. His company specialized in the sale of ravioli in jars and cans. The United Fruit and Date Company, founded by Pietro Costa at LaSalle and the Chicago River, both imported and manufactured the foods sold in its several million dollars a year business. In 1920, prominent Italian businessmen joined together to purchase 10,000 acres of land in Alabama. The Alabama Sheep Raising and Agricultural Company was formed for the express purpose of raising sheep in order to make Italian style cheese from their milk. [124]

Not every Italian business catered to a strictly Italian clientele. Italians also owned such diverse companies as the Miliani Co., which manufactured Miliani's French Salad Dressing, the Olive Can Co., which manufactured olive oil cans, and J. Ginocchio which sold soda fountain supplies. A number of Italian dealers in shelled nuts were in the city, including the Peanut Specialty Co., the second largest peanut firm in the United States. The Stella Cheese Company on Illinois Street distributed Italian cheeses closer to home from factories in Wisconsin and Michigan. P.J Costello on Michigan, M.S. Granchini on Sangamon, Puzzo and Baccigalupi on Chicago Avenue, The Siscco Brothers Candy Company, Pan-Ferrara Company, and the De Luxe Candy Company were all in the confectionery business in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The name Allegretti showed up for years on a confusing succession of candy manufacturers on Wabash, State, Grand, Lake, and Randolph Streets. In 1904, James Allegretti of the Bowes-Allegretti Candy Company on South Water Street was accused of employing young girls under working age, a practice common in candy manufacture. [125]

One of the most important businesses in the Italian neighborhood was macaroni making. Americans were not entirely ignorant of macaroni. Thomas Jefferson, as in so many other things, is credited with importing the first spaghetti-making machine to the United States, but as writer Giuseppe Prezzolini remarks; the American conception of macaroni bore little resemblance to its Italian counterpart. He notes that a 1792 cookbook advised boiling it in water for three hours before re-cooking it in broth for an extra ten minutes. It was then mixed with bread and served in a tureen. Americans had not progressed much further in their skill with macaroni by the time the first Italians came to Chicago. American macaroni was made from soft flour, not the hard durum wheat of Italian brands, and was still subjected to incredible cooking times. The gravies of Italy were as yet unknown to most Americans. [126]

Italian immigrants knew that the best macaroni was made in the area around Naples and labels sporting Gragnano's, Torre Annunziata, and Amalfi were in great demand from the various suppliers of imported products. Because of its high price, imported macaroni proved problematic for families whose diet was reliant upon it. Homemade macaroni was possible, but required large amounts of time, energy, and space for drying. Chicago's weather was uncooperative, since good macaroni relied on drying in the open air and frequent temperature changes from hot to cold in order to keep from becoming rancid. [127]

The first entrepreneurs to supply this need were John B. Canepa and his stepfather, David Tulino who reportedly established Chicago's first macaroni factory in 1860. Macaroni making was a family business, which the two had practiced in Genoa, Lyon, and Algeria. In 1869, brother James Canepa entered the business. The Canepa Brothers Macaroni Company employed five people who worked a twelve-hour day coaxing their macaroni through its difficult drying process. By the turn of the century, the Canepa Brothers were making macaroni, vermicelli, spaghetti, and German Homemade Egg Noodles under the Red Cross brand name. The business was incorporated in 1904 as the John B. Canepa Co. and run by the widow of James Canepa until her two sons took control after W.W.I. However, a 1906 report in L'Italia robbed the enterprise of some of its appeal. The Canepa factory at 101-3 Indiana was the first macaroni plant to be inspected by city health authorities who reported, "that the worktables and dough mixers and troughs were in filthy conditions and that the walls, floors, and windows had not been cleaned for a long time." [128]

As the city's Italian population grew, small storefront locations opened to supply fresh macaroni to Italian customers. In New York in 1906, investigators found macaroni being made in every block of the Italian neighborhood in the front room of small shops. Machines were used to mix and press the paste which was hung to dry in doorways and windows. Many of these shops were still in business into the 1920s. On Taylor Street of Chicago's Near West Side one such store had long poles stretched across the high ceilings on which macaroni hung to dry. To purchase it fresh, another long pole was used to slide the pasta off the drying pole to be packaged for the buyer. [129]

The Alghini family business also began from a small storefront shop but grew to become a supplier to the U.S. Army and the Campbell's Soup Company. Richard Alghini was originally from Bologna, where he probably learned the art of macaroni making. He immigrated to the United States in the late 1890s or early 1900s, where he opened a small storefront macaroni shop, probably much like the one described above. Success led to expansion and a photograph of the Alghini Grocery Store in 1910 shows a full shop with a wide selection of salamis, cheeses, and vegetables. A sign over the door advertising tortellini revealed the former occupation of the owner and his regional origins in Italy as well. Tortellini was a Northern Italian form of macaroni, probably a new experience for his Southern Italian customers. [130]

In the 1920s, the Alghini's expanded once again, re-entering the macaroni business with a factory at 941 West Polk. The family lived next door to the factory, above the store selling its products, and grandson Ronald Alghini described how the plant operated in the 1940s: The factory itself was three stories tall and the process began on the third floor from where 100-pound sacks of semolina flour were poured down a chute to be combined below with water, making the simple paste used in all their cuts of macaroni. Huge kneaders were used to mix the dough. This soft paste was then extruded through a die to create the short cuts of pasta such a penne, mostaccioli, or rigatoni, which were then cut with a knife. The dies used to cut macaroni were a key element in the success of the product and the Alghini dies were made and maintained by a skilled Chicago Italian. [130]

Longer cuts, such as spaghetti, macaroni, and linguini went from the second to the first floor, where a specialized worker spread the long strands over a broomstick-like pole and loaded them on to trucks to be placed for two or three days in a redwood lined drying room. The crucial step was the drying process, which required skill and art to prevent the "cracking" which would render it unsaleable. Unpackaged, the finished product was sold in bins in the front of the store where housewives could select the exact amount they needed before having it wrapped in blue paper for the trip home.

Further expansion meant outlets to cater to local shoppers. The Alghinis opened thirteen stores during the 1930s, selling only their own brand of pasta, in Chicago's Italian neighborhoods. They experimented with new products and methods--working without success on a machine which could replace the laborious process of hand-making their Northern Tortellini, and more successfully on egg noodles in the colors of the Italian flag. But success could also bring danger for a prominent Italian and a second factory went down in flames in the 1930s when the Alghinis refused to acquiesce to Black Hand threats for a share in the business. Chicago supported more than one large macaroni factory and the Alghinis faced competition from the Chicago Macaroni Company, which was founded by Italian immigrants in 1886 and incorporated in 1893 with a capital stock of $10,000. By 1900, the firm was allegedly making two hundred kinds and sizes of macaroni in its 18,000 square-foot facility. In 1928, after the company consolidated with two importers, Morici and Matalone (the founder of Contadina brand), it had capital of over $2 million and employed 300 people. In the mid-1920s, the Traficanti Brothers from Palermo established a small egg noodle factory at 451 North Racine where they manufactured "American Finest Pure Egg Noodles" and packaged them in some of the first cellophane packaging. Carl D'Amico of Highwood also entered the business with his house brand, Mama Mia, complete with a picture of his mother on the package. [131]

Competition did not rule out cooperation. In 1919 the owners of the largest macaroni concerns in the city (Viviano, Caravatta, Morici, Varco, Arrigo, Mataloni, D'Amico, Alghini, and Fresci Salduto) met in the offices of the Chicago Italian Chambers of Commerce to form an association of macaroni manufacturers for the Chicago area. World War I and the halting of imports from Italy had given these producers an opportunity that they were eager to protect. Before the war, the United States had imported over 76 million pounds of macaroni. After the war, imports fell dramatically and the U.S. began to export macaroni. American companies such as Armour and Morris, according to L'Italia, were "dispersing free canned macaroni samples all over America" in an effort to undermine Italian manufacturers. Since "success depends on the quality of the dough, the secret of which is known only to the Italian macaroni manufacturer," the CICC encouraged Italian macaroni makers to unite so that Armour could not hire away their skilled workmen. A strike by macaroni workers demanding a forty-four hour week, which occurred at the same time, suggests owners had an additional reason for cooperation that any American businessman would have understood. [132]

In the 1880s, Italian immigrants to Chicago found their choices for ethnic groceries limited by the meager stock of stores which sold everything from steamship tickets to letter writing services. As Italians filled the neighborhoods on the Near West and Near North Sides, their greater numbers could support a wider variety of specialized food businesses. By the late 1920s, Chicago Italians owned a host of small businesses catering to local customers as well as larger establishments which served a nationwide clientele. In 1927-28, Lisi Cipriani identified 500 retail and 33 wholesale grocers, 60 bakers, 30 café's, 61 produce commission merchants, 240 retail confectioners, 15 macaroni manufacturers, 257 restaurants and lunchrooms, and several food related equipment suppliers. [133]

The process of creating these diverse businesses and of consuming their products effected subtle changes in Italians' perception of their own identities and of their new homes. Arriving in Chicago, immigrants learned that the foods they had relied on at home were not available in the typical American grocery store. Foods which had been perceived generically, acquired an ethnic identity and needed to be sought out from compatriots, preferably from one's own region. Yet, Chicago's Italians came from a variety of regions and savvy businessmen soon learned to stock their shelves with products from several areas. As they shopped in the stores or from peddlers, shoppers could chose from products they might never have seen in their home villages. While Italians continued to identify themselves by their village and regional origins, a new layer of shared Italian ethnic identity was reinforced by each trip to the store.

As more products began to be manufactured locally, buyers also learned that Italian-tasting products did not necessarily have to come from the Italian earth itself. They learned that the hard durum wheat of the Dakota's could make a fine macaroni and the oranges and lemons of California were almost as juicy as those of Italy. Sausages produced on the truck farms outside Chicago were reputed to even rival imported sausages in their sales and quality. Imported products continued to be desirable but mozzarella made in Wisconsin and macaroni produced on the Near West Side, aided the notion that one could be both Italian and American at the same time. [134]

Shopkeepers and business people, too, found the business of food to be a widening experience. Italians were exposed to non-Italians through the process of creating, conducting, and promoting their businesses. One grocery store, opened on the Near North Side in the 1890s had all Norwegian customers and the proprietors learned to speak Norwegian before they even spoke English. Some ingredients stocked in Italian stores were also used by other nationalities. Slovenians, according to Breckinridge, made sauerkraut and cornmeal mush with cornmeal sought out in Italian stores for its superior quality. Peddlers had many non-Italian customers, convinced of the superiority of their produce by the stereotype of the Italian fruit peddler. [135]